Orwell festival

Bit off topic but I have done Economics so now Politics and lastly will be Philosophy. George Orwell settled in my part of the world for a time and recently the locals decided to hold a festival. The debate I attended was “What George Orwell would write about today” A good panel of Gordon Bowker, Rabinder Singh, Corinna Ferguson, Peter Hitchens and Vitali Vitaliev spoke and debated the question very well I thought. Interestingly, given the recent revelations about News Internatonal’s phone hacking this issue was not mentioned. Anyhow I read Peter Hitchens review of the party conferences and was dismayed to see Andrew Tyrie being led away by the thought police:

Orwell claimed he was lower upper middle class. “ Probably the distinguishing mark of the upper-middle class was that its traditions were not to any extent commercial, but mainly military, official, and professional. People in this class owned no land, but they felt that they were landowners in the sight of God and kept up a semi-aristocratic outlook by going into the professions and the fighting services rather than into trade” Since engineering is presumably regarded as trade the British did not get the talents of that class in engineering. Orwell is famous for his essays. Here is one:

The British used to be regarded as incorruptible but there has been a creeping loss of morality mainly caused by News International. Read this for a sense of disquiet: When you join an organisation where the leadership is corrupt it is very difficult not to go with the flow.